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ATMOSPHERE 2
ATMOSPHERE. ATMOSPHERE. 1. What atmosphere is. In the painter's art atmosphere means `the feeling or effect, as of air, light, space, or warmth, given as an environment of any subject'. (Standard Dictionary. ) Thus, the atmosphere of Rembrandt's masterpiece, The Night Watch, is the quite indescribable enrichening influence of a peculiarly mellow amber light which suffuses the scene. In literature the word describes a quality of the story setting and staging. It is the emotional flavor of the place and time in which the dramatic events unfold. For instance, in Stevenson's tale, The Merry Men, it is the feeling awakened by the Scotch coast around Aros, where ' great granite rocks . . . go down together in troops into the sea, like cattle on a summer's day. ' There they stand, for all the world like their neighbors ashore; only the salt water sobbing between them instead of the quiet earth, and clots of sea-pink blooming on their sides instead of heather, and the great sea conger to wreathe about the base of them instead of the poisonous viper of the land. . . . I have often been out there in a dead calm at the slack of the tide; and a strange place it is, with the sea swirling and coming up and boiling like the cauldrons of a linn, and now and again a little dancing mutter of sound as though the Roost were talking to itself. Many students get the notion that environment is atmosphere. And so they fall into the technical blunder of trying to produce atmosphere by elaborate descriptions of scenery. Their belief is false, and their practice only occasionally sound. The atmosphere is, be it repeated, the impression which environment makes upon the beholder and which the beholder, in writing, seeks to convey to his readers. ' It is, if you will allow the phrase, the rock-and-water feeling which Aros aroused in Stevenson. This feeling is not in the rocks and the sea; it is in their beholder. They only stir him; the response is his own, private, unique, and in some respects spontaneous. This response is quite mysterious. Nothing in the scene clearly accounts for its precise quality, any more than the known chemical structure of alcohol explains the unique exhilaration that comes from drinking wine. Poe has given perfect utterance to this fact in his matchless atmosphere story, The Fall of the House of Usher, from Which we cannot cite too often: What was it—I paused to think—what was it that so unnerved me in the contemplation of the House of Usher? It was a mystery all insoluble; nor could I grapple with the shadowy fancies that crowded upon me as I pondered. I was forced to fall back upon the unsatisfactory conclusion, that while, beyond doubt, there are combinations of very simple natural objects whith have the power of thus affecting us, still the analysis of this power lies among II cannot resist cal ing attention to the error of some excellent critics and scholars who give to the art of producing atmosphere the name of Impressionism. Nothing warrants this designation. Impressionism is the theory and practice of reporting scenes and events in terms of their immediately sensed colors, sounds, forms, flavors, and other primitive qualities. The impressionist's ideal is to render only that much of the world which is given to him in raw sensation. The ideal of the atmospheric painter or writer, on the contrary, is to transmit the peculiar and full reality of scenes. To accomplish this, he does not limit himself to his own immediate impressions. He often draws upon his subtlest analogies and his most tediously wrought reflections. Anything that will produce the desired effect upon the reader is eligible. Of course, it commonly happens that a writer of atmosphere uses impressionistic material, but this is only because the latter chances to convey the desired effect. His very next scene may be handled in a wholly different manner. considerations beyond our depth. It was possible, I reflected, that a mere different arrangement of the particulars of the scene, of the details of the picture, would be sufficient to modify, or perhaps to annihilate its capacity for sorrowful impression. . . . This conjecture of Poe's has been confirmed by modem psychology in many fascinating experiments. Even in simple geometrical figures, minute alterations produce a complete transformation of one's feeling toward them. Erase from a circle only a very small arc, and instantly your perception of it is tinged afresh; and your thoughts sent scurrying up strange little lanes and alleys of memory. You may now say, with infinitesimal pain, that a perfect figure has been marred; and the ruin of it may, of a sudden, resemble C, or perhaps the ground plan of a corral, or the cross-section of a bomb, or any of a thousand other queer things. To physician and psychologist, this hypersensitivity of the normal mind to microscopical changes in objects perceived is a matter of absorbing interest. To the story writer it is a source of immeasurable artistic possibilities. Thanks to it, the variety of esthetic effects in the handling of even commonplace . scenes is prodigious. In comparison with it, man's impressions of dramatic action are singularly few. 2. Atmosphere as the single effect of a story. This last circumstance tempts many a novice to write atmosphere stories. And almost inevitably he comes to grief, because the atmosphere story is very different from a story with atmosphere. This distinction, which wiser heads than his frequently overlook, must now be explained. Every story whose setting must be staged at all may have atmosphere. A Lover of Flowers, or almost any other of Mary Wilkins Freeman's New England sketches, has it unmistakably. A Pair of Patient Lovers, like most of Howells' stories, also possesses it in measurable degree. Likewise with the works of nearly every experienced author. Thin it may be, or unconvincing; yet it is there. You receive a definite impression and feeling of the place and time in which the events unfold. The two are not merely reported to you. Something of their lights and shadows reaches you through the printed page; the breezes from the written hills cool you, and in your heart burns warm the cheer of storied firesides. But usually the atmosphere differs in emotional value from the characters and the plot action. Sometimes it stands in sharp contrast to the latter pair; as in Moonlight, where the languorous, dreamy, bewitching midsummer night shines with a light most unlike that in the hard face of the bigoted, woman-hating Abbe. And when there is no such contrast, the atmosphere is almost certain to play a subordinate part in toning the story, as in The Piece of String, where the vivid picture of market day at Goderville harmonizes with the earthy Norman thrift, slyness, and simple honesty of the people in the tragedy. Now, in neither of these typical instances have we an atmosphere story, because their setting does not fix the narrative's tone, dominate it, and produce its single effect. All of which is a negative way of saying that the atmosphere story is one in which character and complication are integrated with and intensify the setting, which latter produces the single effect. As Stevenson puts it, in his much-quoted conversation with Graham Balfour: "You may take a certain atmosphere and get action and persons to express and realize it. I'll give you an example —The Merry Men. There I began with the feeling of one of those islands on the west coast of Scotland, and I gradually developed the story to express the sentiment with which the coast affected me. " 3. Why the atmosphere story is difficult. A brief consideration of this structural peculiarity reveals the intrinsic difficulty of the atmosphere story. When the setting of an episode fixes the tone, and the other dramatic factors simply intensify it, obviously the emotions aroused by the characters and by the events must resemble, in some detectible measure, the emotions of the atmosphere. If the scene is pervaded with gloom, the hero must stalk up and down his dim apartment, gnawing his beard. If, on the contrary, the hills clap their hands for joy, the heroine must join in smartly. This sounds like a very simple formula, but it is not. Two mighty obstacles confront the writer: (a) the narrow range of atmospheric effects, and (b) the lack of harmony between man and Nature, with respect to the feelings each arouses in an observer. a. The narrow range of atmospheric effects. In asserting that the range of atmospheric effects is narrow, we seem to be contradicting our previous statement about their prodigious variety. Range and variety, however, do not mean the same. Range means the extent of variation; as when we speak of the range of the human voice. The distance separating the extreme members of any class or species is the range of that species. Variety, on the other hand, refers to the number of distinctions within the species. A moment's reflection on these terms will assure you that no connection exists between the range and the variety of anything in the world. For instance, the range of a piano—seven octaves and a quarter—exceeds that of a violin which covers about three octaves. But the variety of a violin is many times as great as that of a piano, for the piano can sound only twelve different tones between each octave, while the violin readily sounds fifty or more, whose differences only the most sensitive ear can detect. Now, this contrast appears in all the activities of the human mind. The variety of odors which the normal man senses is very great, but it is slight beside that of the lights and colors which he readily perceives. He distinguishes a few thousand smells—four or five, at most; but his eye reveals to him over thirty-six thousand hues. Nevertheless, the :ange of the odors is incomparably vaster than that of colors. The difference between the smell of sandalwood and that of sour milk is wider than the difference between the gayest yellow and the dullest dark blue. Turpentine is more unlike roasted coffee than green is unlike red. And so generally, even in those complex and elusive feelings which the story teller stirs up. Take as a well marked instance the emotions awakened by the contemplation of scenery. No two landscapes make quite the same impression upon the spectator, and so there are truly as many distinct emotions as there are combinations of sunlight, breeze, outdoor warmth, hills; dells, and crags. But, on the other hand, between the most terrible, most overwhelming of Nature's patterns and the gentlest of her green fields and still waters, the difference of quality is comparatively slight. But few fundamental types appear; there is the frightfulness of the volcanic eruption; the sublimity of iceberg, mountain, and roaring mid-ocean; the depressing dullness of a gray prairie day; the slumberous comfort of summer afternoon; and a few other varieties. But all the pleasant impressions resemble one another in some underlying characteristic in which a simple animal joy predominates, while all the unpleasant seem merely so many shadings of three thin::: panic, temperature, and color feelings. I do not believe that the latter reduce to such a simple triad of factors. Air pressure and the movements of physical objects certainly give rise to their own peculiar feelings, although I seldom find myself able to distinguish these in contemplating a landscape. Doubtless many other forces are at work here too. But the question of fact here is quite irrelevant to our inquiry, inasmuch as we are dealing exclusively with the quality of impressions; and beyond all dispute the latter show nothing of the tremendous difference which everybody feels in contemplating the deeds of men. b. The lack of harmony between the two kinds of feelings. Human acts seem to fall into great constellations which are farther apart than the stars. Consider only those two which most concern the writer of fiction: tragedy and comedy. They have nothing whatever in common, insofar as the quality of their emotions is concerned. They differ in that same profound manner in which hircine odors differ from fragrances. It is a difference, not of degree, but of kind. You cannot pass from one to the other by slight gradations, as you can pass from the joy of a noontide landscape to the melancholy of sunset simply by reducing the amount of light that falls upon the scene. A still sharper contrast might be drawn between esthetic and moral feelings, which, in spite of an indubitable 9kinship in their on ins, fall quite apart in their mature mo es. ut such analyses belong to esthetics, not to the technique of fiction; so we must waive them. We have made our point, that the range of atmospheric effects is X slight ; and, in bringing this out, we have also indicated the wider scope of emotions drawn from human conduct, which is the subject matter of dramatic narrative. We now return to our technical issue: what trouble does all this make for the writer of atmosphere stories ? The trouble is that, because of the naturally wide range of dramatic qualities (those of character and complication, I mean), these cannot be forced to intensify the quality of the story setting except by our artificially narrowing them. And this narrowing can generally 13( accomplished only through the use of abnormal or impas Able characters and complications. But to work up such material into coherent action is a task of exceeding difficulty, calling for the highest order of creative imagination. In the final analysis, it is hard because both the purpose of it and the procedure run contrary to our habits of life. For an elucidation of these points, let us once more inspect The Fall of the House of Usher. The 'insufferable gloom' which is the single effect here has been intensified with consummate skill by the character delineation of Roderick Usher and his sister and by the insidious, mystifying catastrophes befalling them and their domicile. But observe at what cost this has been accomplished. Gloom is deepened only by whatsoever produces gloom. And the only thing in human nature which produces it is the mood itself, or at least some of its bodily manifestations. In Nature, the gray of low hung clouds or of a winter sea may evoke that hue of melancholy; but the gray of aged hairs or of anemic cheeks will not. In other words, the causes of the mood in Nature and in man are disparate; the former induces it through simple colors and sounds and forms, while the latter does so only through sympathetically affecting his beholder. The beholder must perceive such lineaments and behavior as the guest of Roderick Usher noted in his host. Then will the feelings associated with them well up in their witness. ' It is by a sort of instinctive interpretation—or shall we say an imitation?—that this happens, whereas, in the 'This is not what happens in perceiving a humorous character; for what amuses the spectator of a man who is doing something comical may not be comical to the man himself. It may be humiliating and painful. But this exception does not detract from its present application to the atmosphere story. And the reason is that the comic cannot be used as the single effect of an atmosphere story, inasmuch as there is no humor in mere Nature. It is never the setting which supplies that, peunfar and battling incongruity that moves us to laughter. The comic exists only in thought about intents, ideals, and achievements. melancholy brought on by natural scenes, there seems to be nothing more than a little understood chemical process which certain light waves, air pressures, and temperatures set up in the nervous system. Now, it happens—probably by the merest coincidence —that some of the feelings caused by these chemisms closely resemble those associated with certain thoughts. Thus the melancholy of a dull landscape is much like the melancholy attending Usher's thought of Lady Madeline's approaching dissolution. Hence it is that the latter may be used to intensify the former. But there are very few thoughtful feelings which resemble the other kind sufficiently to be so employed. The fpelings of dramstio QPfinii. . andthe still larger, more alien class of ethical emotions have no counterpart in mere scenic effects; at most, they remotely suggest a few of the latter. Therefore, they cannot serve to intensify atmosphere. And because of this a character which is used to this end must almost invariably be depicted so as to present, in strong exaggeration, some undramatic, non-ethical, and even passive trait. Roderick Usher perfectly illustrates this limitation. In mien and behavior he is a mortal the like of which never walked this earth of ours. . . . The character of his face had been at all times remarkable. A cadaverousness of complexion; an eye large, liquid and luminous beyond comparison; lips somewhat thin and very pallid, but of a surpassingly beautiful curve: . . . these features, with an inordinate expansion above the regions of the temple, made up altogether a countenance not easily to be forgotten. And now in the mere exaggeration of the prevailing character of these features, and of the expression they were wont to convey, lay so much of change that I doubted to whom I spoke. The now ghastly pallor of the skin, and the now miraculous lustre of the eye, above all things startled and even awed me. . . . The silken hair, too, had been suffered to grow all unheeded, and as, in its wild gossamer texture, it floated rather than fell about the face, I could not, even with effort, connect its arabesque expression with any idea of simple humanity. Please note this very last clause, which I have italicized. To my mind it indicates that Poe comprehended and deliberately practiced the very principle of character drawing just laid down. For the sake of deepening the insufferable gloom of the setting, he sacrificed the very humanity of Usher. Every succeeding paragraph of the story confirms this a little more. Ask yourself about Usher's conduct. Think of his fluctuating voice, "varying rapidly from a tremulous indecision (when the animal spirits seem utterly in abeyance) to that species of energetic concision—that abrupt, weighty, unhurried, and hollow sounding enunciation—that leaden, self-balanced, and perfectly modulated guttural utterance, which may be observed in the lost drunkard . . . " Was there ever such a voice? And does the lost drunkard possess it? I do not believe it, and neither did Poe. Usher's 'morbid acuteness of the senses', on the other hand, is commonly found, but always in neurasthenics and other ailing folk. Likewise with his vague, objectless fears. But his wild improvisations on the guitar, his phantasmagoric paintings, his spontaneous poetizing, and the wild reading from insane books, —all these in combination can belong only to a dream creature. He is the passive victim of circumstances. He is stripped of all moral power, as far removed from virtue and vice as the lowest brutes are. And there resides in him no other impulse, no other appetite, no other idea, no other purpose save such as are born of his morbidity. In short, he is not a man—as Poe says candidly—but a commiserable lunatic, and such a one as alienist never looked upon. If, now, intensification of the setting requires that human nature be thus falsified, does not the discomfitu're of the would-be writer of atmosphere stories appear without further ado? Just as it is easy to lie magnificently but very hard to lie persuasively, so it is simple enough to twist the stuff of human life into terrifically somber or horrible or exciting fictions but almost impossible to make the people in such fictions coherent enough to produce the illusion of life. The ultimate cause of this difficulty we have already mentioned. It is the very fact to which Poe alludes with such timely acumen: the quality of each individual object we perceive does not reside in its parts or elements, as such, but in some elusive peculiarity of their combination and interrelating. To speak in the tongue of psychology, each entity has its own unique form-quality; and what this is, no man can deduce from the thing's isolated constituents. It follows, then, that the writer who disintegrates, in imagination, a human life and then integrates some of the fragments, to heighten the atmosphere's quality, must proceed blindly and by the merest guess-work, nine times out of ten. Few are the men who have triumphed over this obstacle, and even they bear witness to its stubbornness. Their pages show many a scar of battle with the all-but-impossible. Poe's heroes and villains, marvelously constructed though they are, are not people at all. Stevenson's are vastly more human and comprehensible, although often either puppets with only clothes and mien to match the atmosphere—as in The Merry Men—or else not intensifiers at all—as in Will o' the Mill, where the love story of the miller's boy and the parson's Marjory, though profoundly colored and shaped by the environment, nevertheless takes its own course and turns the reader from the wonderful atmosphere. Even more instructive than Poe and Stevenson, though, is Joseph Conrad, who certainly ranks as the master of masters in the narrow, lofty kingdom of Atmosphere. His finest work, Almayer's Folly, certainly equals the best of Poe, who is Conrad's only serious rival. To quote a recent reviewer: "What impresses one most in re-reading this tragedy of a Bornean river is the wonderful color-effects that lie hidden in its words. The story is almost subordinate in interest to the tawny Oriental landscape, with its loneliness, treachery, and hint of life's brevity. . . . Over against the ineffectual littleness of the men who creep along the lonely river's banks is set the mighty majesty of nature. It is this element which lends the story grandeur and helps it to outwear time. " 1This comment accurately touches both the strength and the weakness of Conrad, and so of the atmosphere story as a species. The landscape subordinates the story, as it should; but in doing so it minimizes dramatic movement and integrity of character. Hence the result is, if nothing worse, sluggish; and it is very likely to give us, instead of people, fantastic fragments and jumbles of human traits. Now, by sheer genius, Conrad shuns this graver catastrophe, but he falls victim to the lesser one. Let the student read carefully—and sympathetically—Conrad's collection of short stories entitled Tales of Unrest. 2He will find that, while the dramatic conceptions are strong, they drag, at times most painfully. The very shadows on the ground are stumbling-blocks to the people here, the breezes halt their speech, and the day's heat wilts their judgment. To be sure, all this is not enough to mar the special beauty of Conrad very much, and it is a slight failure in comparison with his awe-inspiring power of description. But it exemplifies the atmosphere story's supreme difficulty where this difficulty has been most nearly, overcome. 3. The natural theme of the atmosphere story. The student who has thoughtfully followed the above corn 1Coningsby Dawson, in Everybody's, September, 1912. 2Scribner's. merits will doubtless discover for himself that there is at least one subject and one type of plot which can turn to profit all the inconveniences of the atmosphere story. It is the story of the triumphant environment; of which there are two opposite types. The first is the story wherein we see men and women molded by the blind forces of Nature, and human beliefs and aspirations shown to be vain delusions, empty hopes in a hopeless world. Of this sort is everything that Thomas Hardy has written. His minor tales, such as Life's Little Ironies, smoothly fit Prosser Hall Frye's characterization of their author's theme: But with him this varied region (Egdon Heath, the locus of The Return of the Native) . . . is no longer mere scenery, the spectacular decoration of an indifferent comedy, wherein man moves untouched save for some occasional vaporous sentimentality. On the contrary, it has been promoted to a fatal and grandiose complicity in human affairs, of a piece with destiny, overpowering the minds of the actors, tyrannizing over their lives and fortunes, and appearing in anyone locality as but the particular agency and manifestation of a single consistent, universal power. ' The other type of story theme is Hawthorne's. Here again, something in, the setting dominates events and the people in them; but it is no longer blind Nature, it is the Moral Law—or, if you like, God—and on the other side, the Devil. Every reader of Hawthorne is perfectly familiar with this supernatural drama; but it will do no harm to quote from Frye's admirable interpretation of it: The Puritans themselves, his ancestors, were dominated by a single idea . . . the idea of duty and guilt, of something owing God and of man's inability to redeem the debt by his own efforts. Under the influence of this idea their life had undergone a momentous transformation. . . . To all appearances it was with the inclemency of the weather, the hostility of the elements, at most the enmity of the savages that they were contending. In reality this was all but a veil; it was the devil and his ministers, the forces of darkness and evil, the powers of hell that disputed with them for the salvation of their souls. And so to their excited imagination the conflict took on a solemn and grandiose significance. . . . Nothing was too small or remote to remain aloof or unaffected; there were signs in heaven and on earth, omens and portents and forewarnings, earthquake, meteor and eclipse, or dream and vision. . . . The world of spirits was divided in their quarrel, while reality itself was a mask, which might serve indifferently for the covert of a friend or the ambush of a foe. ' Is it not plain why stories spun around such a worldview heighten their atmospheric effect less disastrously than the more realistic variety of fiction does? It is because their dramatic factors are not in the people but in the setting itself, and hence the weaker, illusory crises in the thoughts and feelings of hero and heroine which the atmosphere tends to dampen are not a true part of the deeper complication. They are puppets, not through the writer's clumsy portrayal but because they really are nothing more than the creatures of some Hidden Showman. They are inactive through no sluggishness of the author's style but only because they are, by inmost nature, passive victims of cosmic circumstance. In short, the active force which, in ordinary dramatic narrative, wells up only in men and women now displays itself as a poteney-cd-the-enyironment, which therewith becomes, so far as the emotional effect upon readers is concerned, a character. Be it blind Nature or be it a god, in either case this environment is endowed with a kind of personality having aims and human ways of doing. Its plans may be past understanding, but only by reason of secrets withheld from us and not because their logic and their emotional springs are alien to our minds. We may finish the matter with a paradox: The atmosphere story is easiest in which the setting is not setting at all but the dominant character in a drama without setting. In Stevenson Nature is often the leading lady; in Poe, Conrad, Hardy and most other atmospherists, it is the villain; and in Hawthorne it is sometimes the hero's silhouette. But in all these realms of fancy, it is the great original man without a country. Nature has no environment, and God is without a dwelling place. Beyond them, there is neither time nor place. 4. Atmosphere as an intensifier. Thougn the genuine atmosphere story has narrow range and presents all but insuperable obstacles, the story with atmosphere is moderately easy to manipulate, plastic, and highly adaptable to all moods. By the story with atmosphere I mean, of course, a narrative wherein the tone of the setting is made to reinforce either the theme of a thematic development, or the dominant character of a character story, or the complication of a complication story. Almost every good author employs atmosphere thus, with some degree of skill and charm. And its employment is governed by a few rules which can be formulated with some accuracy, though not with as much as we might wish. In the main, they are merely special applications of principles we have already become familiar with. a. The intensifying effect is conveyed best by a characterization of the effect itself rather than by a description of the objects which, in assemblage, give rise to it. At first reading, this may sound either meaningless or at least unprofitable. Of course the effect is most vivid when characterized, you may say; so the advice is idle. But such an observation misses the point, which is that characterization of causes is by no means the same as characterization of their effects. This is one of the most important facts in all artistic technique, be it the technique of story writing or of sculpture or of etching. It is no peculiar secret of art, but a general fact true of all causes and all effects. The physicist may describe to you ever so faithfully the nature of electricity and especially the differences of potential that go with differences of temperature. But all this will not give you a picture of the thunderclap which follows the flash of lightning. For here, and everywhere else, there is some unique quality in the effect which the cause does not possess and which therefore cannot be described in terms of the cause. Illustrations from fiction, however, will doubtless guide the learner more surely; so let us press into service that master of happy characterization, Daudet, and then contrast with him the least happy of all characterizers among writers of repute, namely Mary Wilkins Freeman. In The Lighthouse of the Sanguinaires Daudet is depicting at the outset the coast of the island where the episode unrolls. In the midst of the picture comes this: . . . When the mistral or the tramontana did not blow too hard, I would seat myself between two rocks at the water's edge, amid the gulls and blackbirds and swallows, and I would stay there almost all day in that sort of stupor and delicious prostration which are born of gazing at the sea. You know, do you not, that pleasant intoxication of the mind? You do not think; you do not dream. Your whole being escapes you, flies away—is scattered about. You are the gull that plunges into the sea, the spray that floats in the sunlight between two waves—the white smoke of yonder steamer rapidly disappearing. . . . Here you have an extreme instance, in which the details of the scene are either ignored or baldly mentioned, and the whole quality of it made known through the mental effect the place makes upon the narrator. Powerful this device is, provided the reader is familiar with the hypnotic drowsiness which the sea induces; but it fails sadly, if he has never experienced it. In the latter case there always remains a second method, namely that of describing the material effect of the setting upon persons or things in it. Thus, in The Little Pies: It was a magnificent morning, one of those bright, sunny May mornings which fill the fruit shops with clusters of cherries and bunches of lilac. Or again, in The Pope's Mule: He who never saw Avignon in the time of the Popes has seen nothing. . . . Ah! the happy days! the happy city! Halberds that did not wound, state prisons where they put wine to cool. No famines; no wars. And, as a last sample, the fine handling in The Elixir of Father Gaucher: Twenty years ago, the Prémontrès'or the White Fathers, as we Provengals call them, had fallen into utter destitution. If you could have seen their convent in those days, it would have made your heart ache. The high wall, the PacOme Tower, were falling to pieces. All around the grass-grown cloisters, the pillars were cracked, the stone saints crumbling in their recesses. Not a stained glass window whole, not a door that would close. In the courtyard, in the chapels, the wind from the Rhone blew as it blows in Camargue, extinguishing the candles, breaking the leaden sashes of the windows, spilling the water from the holy-water vessels. But saddest of all was the convent belfry, silent as an empty dove-cote; and the fathers, in default of money to buy a bell, were obliged to ring for matins with clappers of almond-wood. These are all perfect, and because Daudet has clearly grasped and applied the profound truth that we judge things most acutely by their consequences. Notice especially the simple skill of the first quotation. Instead of drawing an elaborate picture of a May morning, Daudet simply tells you the effect it had upon the fruit-shops. Here his technique is clear as day, whereas in the second citation it is not. The reader probably will have to stop and think that, when the author says: "Halberds that did not wound, state prisons where they put wine to cool, " he is deftly naming the results of the peaceful rule of the Popes in Avignon. But, once you think about it, there can be no doubt that this is precisely what he is doing. Contrast with these exquisite passages the opening description of the Munson house, in Mrs. Freeman's A Symphony in Lavender. Before criticizing it, we must recall that, in this story, the setting ought to integrate naturally with the dramatic action; for the sight of the house and its adornments indirectly leads the narrator into contact with the heroine and, as the title indicates, sets the tone of the story. . . . The first object in Ware, outside of my immediate personal surroundings, which arrested my attention was the Munson house. l'`ThenI looked out of my window the next morning it loomed up directly opposite, across the road, dark and moist from the rain of the night before. There were so many elm trees in front of the house I was in, that the little pools of rain water, still standing in the road here and there, did not glisten and shine at all, although the sun was bright and quite high. The house itself stood far enough back to allow of a good square yard in front, and was raised from the street-level the height of a face-wall. Three or four steps led up to the front walk. On each side of the steps, growing near the edge of the wall, was an enormous lilac-tree in full blossom. I could see them tossing their purple clusters between the elm branches; there was quite a wind blowing that morning. A hedge of lilacs, kept low by constant cropping, began at the blooming lilac-trees, and reached around the rest of the yard, at the top of the face-wall. The yard was gay with flowers, laid out in fantastic little beds, all bordered trimly with box. The house . . . had no beauty in itself, being boldly plain and glaring, like all of its kind; but the green waving boughs of the elms and lilacs and the undulating shadows they cast toned it down and gave it an air of coolness and quiet and lovely reserve. I began to feel a sort of pleasant, idle curiosity concerning it . . . and after breakfast . . . I took occasion to ask my hostess . . . who lived there. The student is urgently requested to study this passage minutely, comparing its turns with those of Daudet's. If he will do this, he will discover a most important structural difference between the techniques of the two authors. Daudet describes by noting the effects of the, described thing upon something or somebody else. Mrs. Freeman describes directly and then notes the cause of the described thing. Thus; she tells us what made the Munson house look dark and moist, instead of telling us how the darkness and moisture of it affected her or something or somebody in the story. She explains why the pools of rain-water did not glisten, but she does not tell how they impressed her or what change or quality they wrought in the scene. She sees the lilac-trees tossing their blossoms; but Daudet would have told you what the motion made him think about and feel, or perhaps described the odd little shadows it caused to flit pendulously across the sward. Now, it is just this difference which marks art off most sharply from science and other practical ways of thinking and doing. The scientist and sometimes the business man are concerned seriously with causes and reasons; for, knowing these, they are enabled to control the effects and thus to manage the world according to their liking. But the artist does not care to dominate finance or shape politics or &plain the ultimate nature of carbon and bacteria; he aims only to depict various human affairs, especially the natural problems of life and human nature's way of coping with them. For his purposes, therefore, events and objects exhibit themselves with clearest contour in their influence upon man and man's natural environment. For it is this very influence, and it alone, which makes them factors in life's drama. To narrate causes, while developing the setting of a story, is to forget the very nature and ideals of art itself; it is to become, for the nonce, practical or scientific or, perhaps, merely garrulous. Much less offensive, of course, is flat, unexplaining description of details, such as one encounters all too frequently in the pages of most American local-color artists, whose technique is generally no less stiff than their parochial ideas. To call a spade a spade, a black horse a black horse, and so on, is a sin of omission only. It does not name causes, it merely fails to name effects. It is therefore a neutral method; at times serving admirably but generally so weak that it is more to be pitied than censured. The reader is particularly warned against misconstruing the above. He must not think that I am there condemning the supposed virtue of simplicity. To rate low the description that does not characterize effects is by no means the same as to say that the parables of the Bible, for instance, are ill written because they do not characterize. It is true, their descriptive passages will be searched for in vain, while their occasional descriptive words are as bald as mountain granite. But this is precisely as it should be; for the parables, as we have said elsewhere, are not short stories at all, but fables like . /Esop's (though less ingenious than the latter), and they are not fables with atmosphere. Nor could they have been such, without complete surrender of their purpose. Their aim was, of course, to bring home to some barbarians certain profound moral and religious themes. Now, the emotional quality of the latter is utterly alien to that of landscapes, town sights, architecture, furniture, weather, and all the , ther elements which figure in the setting of narrative and whose effects constitute atmosphere. How futile it would have been, then, to have essayed intensifying the idea in, say, the parable of the prodigal son by descanting upon the calm and comfort of his old homestead or upon the filth of the courtyards where he devoured husks in the last days of folly! Doubtless such word-painting would have a power all its own—but this very excellence would have here become a vice, for it would have muffled the still, small voice of the sermon. One might as well try to accentuate the richness of human song with an accompaniment of thunder-claps and surf tumult. Wherever atmosphere distorts or obscures the single effect, description should be as flavorless and as unsuggestive as possible. It should vanish behind the story, even as it does in all great thematic narratives turning around ethical and religious ideas. But all such stories, be it repeated, are not stories with atmosphere, either by right or in fact. Hence what we have been saying about the handling of description does not apply to them. b. Atmosphere is integrated intensively by letting the action of characters in the story be directed toward or otherwise involve such elements of the setting as are intimately connected with the tone of the latter. We saw, a moment ago, that one way of securing effective atmosphere is to characterize its effect. We have now to ask the more special question: which effect, if any, lends itself best to such characterizing? Broadly speaking, the answer runs thus: the best effect is the one to which the people of the story respond in a manner that affects the course of the story somehow. For such an effect is most closely woven into the texture of the plot itself. Good literature abounds with instances of this, but there is none superior to Markheim. A great technician in every fictional problem, Stevenson was at his best in integrating atmosphere. Where can you find anything more finely wrought than the events ensuing upon Markheim's murder of the dealer? The thought was yet in his mind, when, first one and then another, with every variety of pace and voice—one deep as the bell from a cathedral turret, another ringing on its treble notes the prelude of a waltz—the clocks began to strike the hour of three in the afternoon. The sudden outbreak of so many tongues in that dumb chamber staggered him. He began to bestir himself, going to and fro with the candle, beleaguered by moving shadows, and startled to the soul by chance reflections. In many rich mirrors, some of home design, some from Venice or Amsterdam, he saw his face repeated and repeated, as if it were an army of spies; his own eyes met and detected him; and the sound of his own steps, lightly as they fell, vexed the surrounding quiet. And still, as he continued to fill his pockets, his mind accused him with a sickening iteration, of the thousand faults of his design. . . . Observe that Stevenson has chosen those very objects and sights and sounds which most naturally might play into just this dramatic situation. Clocks whose striking impresses the murderer as though they were alarums sounding his crime abroad and summoning the inhabitants of the earth to his pursuit. Mirrors which fling back into his face that very face itself, but so shadowed and shrunken in perspective and so fleeting that its innumerable manifestations impress him as an army of spies, and send him off into a cold panic. These disturbers of his fancied seclusion prey upon his mind, stir up fears that otherwise would have slumbered innocuously, and finally drive him into a turmoil of conscience and sophistry which precipitates the crucial situation. Here we find the ideal handling; the setting is much more than the place where things happen, it plays a part in the march of events, even as the dominant character does. It makes him think, it harasses him, it helps lead him to confession. c. Those elements of the setting figure most effectively in the action which enter into the latter most frequently, rather than most decisively. This rule must be carefully construed. It is a generalization which story factors sometimes restrict and obscure. The theme, for instance, may include the thought that one little sight or sound turns a man from an evil course; and then, of course, this one little sight or sound must be played up tremendously at the dramatic instant. But usually stories do not demand such manipulation, for their settings only reinforce some emotional quality that runs through their entire actions. . In all such cases, the writer's task is identical with that of the musical composer, who, starting with a certain simple combination of notes (his theme), endeavors to sustain, evenly yet without monotony, their unique melody and feeling values throughout the whole composition. Now, it is a matter of easy observation that a series of relatively slight impressions harmoniously related produces an intenser mood in us than the same impressions when condensed into one or two terrific instants of appreciation. Thus, a symphony one hour long brings to life more throbbingly its theme than the most exquisite two or three bars of music could. And, in a story, the most magnificent picture of the setting crowded, let us say, into the opening paragraph, will heighten the single effect much less potently than a hundred little significant glimpses of tree, sky, and brook scattered loosely up and down the whole narrative. A host of young writers seem unaware of this elementary psychological fact. They cram all their landscapes into the opening event and leave the body of the story as bare of pictures as a ledger. The result is twice disastrous. In the first place, the setting has scarcely time, in the opening event, to integrate closely with the other factors of the story; so there it sits, like a dainty bonnet on the head of an ill-favored woman, all too painfully not of a piece with her. In the second place, such a story, moving from fine scenery to none at all, is almost certain to produce a declining effect—at least slightly. This danger, to be sure, diminishes as the dramatic intensity of the complication and character drawing waxes. Yet it is ever present. d. If possible, depict the setting from the point of view of the dominant character. Should some complication make this awkward, choose the point of view of some other character. If this, too, is impossible, employ that of a non-participating narrator. Only as a last resort, depict atmosphere objectively. (By point of view we here mean, of course, the angle of narration. ) The reasons for this rule have already been set forth in our discussion of the angle of narration. ' EXERCISES Analyze minutely the manner in which the settings of the following stories have been integrated so as to produce atmosphere. State precisely which of the above rules have been adhered to and which have not. Can you suggest better manipulation anywhere? Haines, Donald Hamilton—Who Only Stand and Wait. (Everybody's, Oct. , 1910. ) Stringer, Arthur—The Man Who Made Good. (Everybody's, Dec. , 1910. ) • Oppenheim, Jas. —Slag. (Everybody's, June, 1911. ) Hibbard, Geo. —The Skyscraper. (Scribner's, Jan. , 1911. ) Dreiser, Theodore—The Mighty Burke. (McClure's, • • May, 1911. ) • Post, Melville D. —The House of the Dead Man. (Saturday Ev. Post, Sept. 30, 1911. ) Take the characters and the complication of someone of the following stories, discover the single effect, and then alter the author's treatment of the setting so as to make it intensify that effect better than it now does. Krog, Fritz—Die Wanderlust. (McClure's, Aug. , 1911. ) Gerould, Katherine F. —The Wine of Violence. (Scribner's, July, 1911. ) Humphreys, Mary Gay— For East is East, and West is West. ' (Scribner's, Oct. , 1911. ) Singmaster, Elsie—The Rebellion of Wilhelmina. (Century, Sept. , 1911. ) 3. Here is a list of settings. Designate with great care the emotional qualities of each one with which you are at all familiar; and, if any stories suggest themselves to you which those qualities intensify, sketch the plots. Times Square, Manhattan, at seven o'clock Sunday morning. An abandoned church in the Berkshire hills. Noon hour in a knitting mill. An old-fashioned New England parlor. Threshing day on an Iowa farm. A clear winter day in the Canadian woods. The council chamber of some American city, during a session of aldermen. A camp meeting in the back counties. A sailors' supply store in an American seaport. A village drug store. Around a baseball bulletin before a newspaper office. 4. In each of the following adages is the germ of a hundred tales. Choose the one that appeals most strongly to you and write a thematic story around it, working as below prescribed: What's worth doing at all is worth doing well. A stitch in time saves nine. Half a loaf is better than no loaf at all. Take care of the pence and the pounds will take care of themselves. God helps them that help themselves. A small leak will sink a big ship. It is hard for an empty bag to stand upright. Having chosen your adage and the theme which your story is to exemplify, proceed as follows: Write your theme (or story germ) in a few declarative sentences. Pick out each phase of the idea and represent it by a person (or by many persons) acting. For instance, if your theme is: 'A weak, cowardly man is more terrible than a brave one in a desperate situation, ' depict a weak inan, a brave man, and a desperate situation in which the coward does something more courageous or more foolhardy than the brave man would do. Then find an incident exhibiting the coward as a coward, and another revealing the courage of the brave man. Write a brief narrative account of such situations, paying no attention to anything save clarity. If possible, keep the natural order of events. Test the consistency and lifelikeness of the resulting rough story by thinking through all the episodes from the point of view of each character involved in them. Eliminate scenes and character delineation that are not strictly necessary to convey the story. Whenever possible, make one episode develop two or three essential ideas. Test the order of events. If they do not move with even or rising effectiveness, recast them so that they do. This may be done either by giving them a new order or else by intensifying. 7. Fix upon the dominant emotional tone of the story as a whole. With this clearly in mind, re-write from start to finish, echoing the tone whenever possible. Begin this not less than a week after the preceding task has been finished. Warning. Do not suppose that this is the model way of writing stories. After you have found yourself, you may go at the work in any of a dozen other manners. But this exercise, though artificial and difficult, is valuable because it sharpens the fundamental issues of technique. 5. Pick out from the following abridged fairy tale the theme, the complication, the characters, and the action. Having done so, write a 1, 000-word story outline preserving the idea and the typical line of action and the outcome of the original, but substituting human beings for the characters. Next alter your version so that it will become a genuine short story, and then finish it as such. There were once a mouse, a bird, and a sausage, who formed a partnership. They had set up housekeeping, and had lived for a long time in great harmony together. The duty of 'the bird was to fly every day into the forests and bring home wood; the mouse had to draw water, to light the fire, and lay the table-cloth; and the sausage was cook. It happened one day that the bird had met in his road another bird, to which he had boasted of their happiness and friendship at home. The other bird replied scornfully, "What a poor little simpleton you are to work in the way you do, while the other two are enjoying themselves at home!" When the mouse has lighted the fire and drawn the water she can go and rest in her little room till she is called to lay the cloth. The sausage can sit by the stove while he watches that the dinner is well cooked, and when the dinner time arrives he devours four times as much as the others of broth or vegetables till he quite shines with salt and fat. " The bird, after listening to this, came home quite discontented, and, laying down his load, seated himself at the table and ate so much and filled his crop so full that he slept next morning without waking, and thought this was a happy life. The next day the little bird objected to go and fetch wood, saying that he had been their servant long enough, and that he had been a fool to work for them in this way. He intended at once to make a change and seek his living in another way. After this, although the mouse and the sausage were both in a rage, the bird was master, and would have his own way. So he proposed that they should draw lots, and the lots fell so that the sausage was to fetch the wood, the mouse to be cook, and the bird to draw the water. Now what was the consequence of all this? The sausage went out to get wood, the bird lighted the fire, and the mouse put on the saucepan and sat down to watch it till the sausage returned home with the wood for the next day. But he stayed away so long that the bird, who wanted a breath of fresh air, went out to look for him. On his way he met a dog, who told him that, having met the sausage, he had devoured him. The bird complained greatly against the dog for his conduct, and called him a cruel robber, but it did no good. The little bird, full of sorrow, flew home carrying the wood with him and related to the mouse what he had seen. They were both very grieved, but quickly agreed 'that the best thing for them to do was to remain together. From that time the bird undertook to prepare the table, and the mouse to roast something for supper, and to put the vegetables into the saucepan, as she had seen the sausage do; but before she had half finished her task, the fire burned her so terribly that she fell down and died. When the little bird came home, there was no cook to be seen, and the fire was nearly out. The bird, in alarm, threw the wood here and there, cried out, and searched everywhere, but no cook could be found. Meanwhile a spark from the fire fell on the wood and set it in a blaze, so that there was danger of the house being burned. The bird ran in haste to the well for water. Unfortunately, he let the pail fall into the well, and, being dragged after it, he sank into the water and was drowned. 6. Each of the following stories typifies its author's technique. To acquire intimacy with the latter, carry out the following program faithfully. On it the average student ought to spend not less than 400 hours. Transcribe each story three times. Reproduce it from memory three times, as best you can, never looking back to the original for aid. These • trials should not be made on successive days, but at longer intervals. • Invent a new setting for the plot and write a story, adhering as closely as possible to the style of the original. • Repeat this at least three times. For variety, choose a fresh setting at each practice. • Invent a plot considerably different from the original and write your story in the model style. Repeat this at least five times. (Note. For ordinary class work this exercise must be greatly shortened. In this case it is advisable to concentrate on one author's style. By all means avoid a little experimenting with several authors. This is worthless and confusing. ) The stories to be experimented with are: Poe—The Cask of Amontillado. • Maupassant—The Necklace. • Stevenson—The Sire de Malêtroit's_Door. (In New Arabian Nights. ) Wharton—His Father's Son. (In Tales of Ghosts and Men. ) 5. 0. Henry—The Gift of the Magi. (In The Four Million. ) 7. The following is an underdeveloped story. Discover its theme (or other single effect). Then estimate which dramatic factor of the plat is weakest; Suggest improvements in it. Next criticize the angle of narration and, if possible, improve it. Finally rewrite the story in not less than 3, 500 words. Five hundred, —one thousand, —three thousand dollars for the head of Sarafan! He sank upon his doorstep, the paper slipping from his hand. Motionless, yearning, he looked to the west, —always to the west, —and over their beer they would say:— " Old Hamlin, he waits for his boy. " In just such a twilight he had pleaded for her love, — and when the moon was high, she promised. All the long May day they danced at their betrothal, and when the evening came, she had danced into the heart of Pierre, a rough but dashing soldier. The wise heads nodded :— " He is handsome ". The young heads whispered:— "She looks not unkindly on the stranger". Hamlin said nothing. One evening at parting, he held her hand longer than usual :— " It is Pierre you love ", —and she answered:— "Yes". That night young Hamlin, listless, stolid, laid upon the parson's table a few thumb-worn bills:— " There will be no wedding". In the morning, Pierre had gone and with him Hamlin's love. The years that followed brought no word from Hamlin's love, neither did he make an effort to hear from her. Sometimes in the hushed voices as he passed, he could catch rumors of wretched poverty, of a brutal husband, and once it seemed to him that they spoke of her as a widow. Hamlin dreamed strange dreams. She was coming back, —always coming back. Sometimes he trembled at her footstep. Sometimes his tired eyes drew her from the darkness. But always when the moon was high, he strained her to his aching heart. Returning one evening, he found upon his doorstep a huddled mass of rags, half buried in snow, and beside it a whimpering child. Filled with apprehension, he turned the body. It was she. He stared stupidly at the unconscious face. Suddenly he seized her wrist and felt her pulse. Frightened, he tore away her shawl and laid his ear above her heart. He rose reassured, and carried her into the house, the little one toddling at his heels. Beside the hearth, he piled up for her a bed. He gathered the rough twigs and built her a fire. For three miles he waded through the snow to bring back with him the village doctor. With the devotion of an ill-used cur, he watched beside her, and when the moon was high, she closed her sightless eyes. Three days after there was the funeral, a trustee of the orphanage came to relieve him of the child. Hamlin kept the boy. From this day, the tavern saw him no more. All day he toiled in the fields. His nights he spent at home, mending shoes. When some father's heart would overflow with pride in his son, Hamlin said nothing. He looked at the tousled head of his boy, and in his eyes there glowed a far-off vision. As soon as the boy could understand, Hamlin would take out for him the silver hoard that grew so slowly. He would tell him of the wonderful schools in town, of the learning and honors that would be his. Every morning he drove him five miles to town that he might have a better schooling than the humble village could afford, and when, showered with honors, he entered the university, old Hamlin sat at home worn, triumphant, counting the last dollar that was needed to complete his dream As he passed through the village, he could catch again the hushed whispers. This time they were speaking of the boy and well they might speak. If only—Ah well, perhaps it was a fancy. Yet Hamlin felt that in his boy there was growing more and more powerful the lawless spirit of his father. Twice he had been caught in some wild escapade, and was spared only because of his brilliant scholarship. Time and again he wrote for the money that Hamlin sent him with a trembling hand, —the money he needed for his studies—the money that found its way into some pit of hell. For months at a time he would absent himself from his studies. In his supposed senior year he came home one night to stay. Nervously Hamlin questioned him. No, he had met no one in the village. Hamlin beseeched him to return. He argued, pleaded, threatened. He learned the whole crushing truth. They quarreled. The lad disappeared and with him the last of the silver hoard. Hamlin laid his snowy head on the empty box. "His father's blood, —only his father's blood". Still looking to the west, —always to the west where his boy had gone, —Hamlin was startled from his dreaming. Someone was stumbling up the garden path. Someone fell upon him with a sob. 'His boy'. Wild-eyed he pointed to the west. "There, —there! They're coming for me" "For you"? "I am Sarafan". Hamlin was motionless. "Who knows that Hamlin's son is Sarafan"? "Only you". His hands closed upon the lad's throat. He dragged him down into the cellar. They struggled fiercely. Hamlin was the stronger. He held him down until he breathed no more and then, smiling, he went out to meet the pursuers. That night when the moon was high he dug the grave in a lonely thicket, and there he laid 'His Boy'. Category:Atmosphere